Modern passenger transport aircraft typically include plural aircraft computers connected to each other via an aircraft data bus. Thereby, the computers may be individually installed at separate locations distributed throughout the aircraft, often at inaccessible or difficult-to-access locations.
Over the course of the operating life of the aircraft, it becomes necessary to exchange programs in the aircraft computers, i.e. to reprogram or newly program a given aircraft computer with a different software program. This may involve loading merely updated or improved versions of a previous computer program, or loading an entirely new or substantially different program to be executed in the respective aircraft computer. In any event, this requires loading a new software program to replace the previous program in the respective aircraft computer.
One known method for exchanging computer programs in aircraft computers in the context as described above involves physically exchanging memory components in which the respective programs are stored. To achieve this, each respective aircraft computer is uninstalled and removed physically from the aircraft and brought to a workshop, where the respective pertinent memory component (which may be any known type of program storage component) is physically removed from the computer. Then, a new memory component, in which the new program has been loaded, is physically installed into the computer. Thereafter, the computer itself (including the new memory component with the new program) must be reinstalled in the aircraft. Such a method of reprogramming or exchanging programs in aircraft computers is extremely complicated, time consuming, and costly.
Another known method of reprogramming or exchanging programs in aircraft computers allows the computers to remain physically installed at their existing installation locations, but instead loads the new programs via the existing aircraft data bus or data buses. Unfortunately, the data transfer or throughput rate of conventional aircraft data buses is quite low, so that the loading of new programs via the aircraft data bus is very time consuming and generally bothersome and not satisfactory.